Chinese

[topum]

Can somebody translate what is written on these ginger jars into English please?

Comments

[zirnis]

長命百歲 - May you live a hundred years.
富貴萬年 - Be rich and noble for ten thousand years.

[topum]

Thank you.

[topum]

I like how self contradictory they are. Live just to a hundred years but be rich and noble for ten thousand years.

[muckefuck]

That's totally typical of these sorts of couplets, though. They want to maintain parallel structure without repeating any characters. (Note how even the word for "year" is different: 歲 on the first vase and 年 on the second.)

[topum]

Very interesting, I did not notice that.

[muckefuck]

Cf. the honorific expression 千秋萬歲 ("thousand autumns, ten thousand years") meaning "to live a long life".